Review by: Kit Nygaard-Gavin
Description: Patrick vive ancora [a.k.a. Patrick lebt (Germany), Il ritorno di Patric [shooting title).
Written by: Piero Regnoli
Directed by: Mario Landi
Cast: Sacha Pitoeff, Gianni Dei, Maria Angela Giodan [Mariangela Giordano],Carmen Russo, Paolo Giusti, Franco Silva, John Benedy [Givanni di Benedettis], Anna Veneziano and Andrea Belfiore.
Source: Shriek Show/Media Blasters (United States, NTSC Region 1 [92 min 31 sec]
Language: Italian language, English subtitles.

In the pre-credits sequence, whilst trying to repair a car by the roadside, Patrick [Dei] is hit with a bottle thrown from a car window which leaves him in an irreversible coma, despite efforts by his father, the surgeon Dr Herschel [Pitoeff].  Some time later, guests start turning up the clinic [named the <>] and are welcomed by the comely blonde Lydia Grant [Belfiore - uncredited].  First to arrive are Stella Randolph [Giordano] and her companion Peter Sulniak [John Benedy].   Alongside them are a slightly snooty couple, Lyndon and Sheryl Cough [Franco Silva, Carmen Russo], a Member of Parliament and his younger wife.  Shortly afterwards the fifth guest, David Davis [Paolo Giusti], arrives. 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the clinic, three patients are wired up to a strange machine in a “green” room, whilst next door Patrick lies in his coma.  Hershel comes into the room, telling his son that everything is going to plan.  Outside the assorted guests are feeling hostility towards each other, aware that neither couple seems to like the other.  Later it turns out that the Coughs have been invited to the Institute by a blackmailer, as Sheryl used her sexual charms to get her husband a seat in the House of Lords (!!). Outside Meg [Veneziano], who also works at the clinic and who seems to have an unusual affection for the guard dogs, warns Davis to leave the Institute, to which he replies that he can’t.

Over dinner, Doctor Herschel offers to give his guests check ups for health and nearly all of them refuse.  At one point Miss Grant’s suddenly glass explodes but no one seems to notice or care, blaming it on the crystal ware.  Following dinner, rather than sleeping with his wife, Lyndon Cough decides to go for a swim in tpool in the grounds of the Clinic [as apparently he is a champion swimmer].  A strong wind start to blow through the trees and plants outside, and the water in the pool turns scolding hot and boils Cough alive, who’s body is discovered the next morning by Stella.

At lunchtime, whilst the remaining guests are eating their lunch when Stella arrives drunk, brandishing a bottle of J&B (what else??), dressed in only a dressing gown and red see thru panties, and starts to cause a scene declaring that everyone who has been invited is hiding a dark secret for which they are being blackmailed.  Her behavior upsets Sheryl, who Stella calls an ugly bitch, after asking her to behave properly.  This remark only aggravates Stella further who declares that she had worked as a street worker, and that her companion Sulniak was a drugs trafficker.  She then launches her offensive against Sheryl telling her that her husband only got where he was in politics, because she allowed herself to be fucked like a cow by a bull to advance his career.  This proves too much and two women engage in a cat fight.   Later on that evening Stella tries, unsuccessfully, to seduce Davis in his room.  

After slapping some sense into Stella, Davis leaves his room.  Once again Meg tries to encourage him to leave.  Whilst outside having a cigarette, Davis sees Patrick’s eyes after looking down an apparently abandoned well, before spending a considerable amount of time looking scared at a large hook, which promptly impales itself on Davis’ throat and strings him up.  His body is soon after discovered by Stella who flees back into the house and into the kitchen in terror.  She discovers the disemboweled body of a monkey in the fridge before meeting her own demise on the kitchen table in a particularly nasty impaling with a poker.

Patrick then lures Lydia into his bedroom, seemingly possessed by Patrick, Lydia proceeds to masturbate on the sofa in front of him.  Meanwhile, Sheryl tries to persuade Sulniak to drive them away from the Institute.  Whilst waiting for Sulniak in the garage, Sheryl is decapitated with a car window and soon after Sulniak is suffocated by poisonous exhaust fumes after being trapped in his car.  Meanwhile, the Professor tells Patrick with glee that he has killed off five of the six he believes those responsible for his comatose state, having plotted this over three years with only Lydia remaining.  Patrick refuses to kill her so the Professor decides to kill her himself.  This however sparks a rage in Patrick who makes the Professors machine go crazy, killing off the assistants in the lab and causing the three patients who are wired up to the machine to go into spasm.  Meg is attacked and eaten alive by the German Shepherds.  

Breaking into Lydia’s room, the professor attempts to give her a lethal injection by syringe however Patrick makes him turn the needle towards himself and to inject the poison into his own system rather than that of his intended victim.  With everything going haywire in the clinic, and lights flashin, machines exploding, Lydia makes her way down to Patrick’s room.  She arrives and everything seems to calm down, she sits on the floor by Patrick’s bed, and then screams.

The cast is an interesting bunch (or “clan” as Crisanti refers to them).  Headlining is Swiss actor Sacha Pitoeff, at one point an actor of some stature in France, but his role as much as his acting is fairly bland and uninspired here with little need for acting or performing.  Gianni Dei plays the title role of Patrick.  Dei started his acting career at an early age, and has appeared in a largely unmemorable bunch of films (for which he complains he has never been paid for).  One of his earliest credited roles was in a Fulci comedy and he also appeared in Giallo a Venezia, playing a more substantial role as a more sleazy character, which was made the same year as Patrick (i.e. 1977), again directed by Mario Landi and produced by Crisanti. Crisanti has appeared in various other films, but also has released a number of CDs and had a career as a pop singer in his native Italy. The actors playing the other male characters had shorter generally uninteresting careers, Benedy having appeared in a small number of films towards the end of the 70’s, and Paolo Giusti only worked sporadically but predominantly in movies of a “trashy nature” such as Emanuelle in Taboo Island and Rino di Silvestro’s Red Light Girls.  

The female cast, with the exception of Anna Veneziano, who’s only recorded appearance in film appears to have been this one, seem to have had longer and more diverse careers.  Carmen Russo went on to be a popular cover girl, with numerous appearances in girly magazines throughout the 80s [mostly the tawdry Gin Fizz], coupled with appearances in films as well as on TV both as a presenter and game show hostess in Italy and Spain, with a strikingly different appearance, thanks to considerable plastic surgery to her face and having cut her dark auburn hair very short and dying it a striking platinum blonde.  In the role of the attractive and shapely Lydia Grant, the uninhibited blonde assistant of Doctor Hershel, is the [surprisingly] uncredited Andrea Belfiore, in her first film role, and is given considerable screen time and presence.  The attractive Belfiore has gone on to appear in other films, working for notable directors such as Sordi, Vanzina, Cozzi, and in a small role for one of Bruno Mattei’s latter movies.  Together with a career in movies, Belfiore has worked as a photomodel and, like Dei, had something of a career in pop music.  The most luminous and prolific of the female cast is the lovely Mariangela Giordano, star of some of Italy’s sleaziest horror films from the 70’s  and early 80’s, produced by Crisanti (who was her boyfriend at the time), but has been a staple player in Italian cinema since the late 50s.  Her career has been busy and extremely varied, from peplums to reportedly working with Steve McQueen and Sam Peckinpah in an unreleased (or unfinished film called Jimmy Angel’s Story) to working with directors such as Jess Franco (in Killer Barbys) and Michele Soavi (in The Sect) during the 90s.   Her latest appearance on screen has been recorded as being in 2005.  However in the film under review, the provocative Miss Giordano spends most of her time in a string of revealing outfits when she isn’t topless, in see-through underwear or naked.  When making Patrick Lives Again she was 40 years old, yet she still looks attractive and is as uninhibited in her performance here as her younger female co-stars.  When interviewed in 2002, at the age of 65, Giordano turned up for her interview in a tight top, braless, and looking as splendid as she had done some 25 years ago, seemingly not to have aged a day since she made these films for Crisanti.             

A notable plus of the film is the location where the film was shot, which was entirely shot in and around the same beautiful Neo-Romantic mansion which Crisanti and largely the same crew would later use in equally low budget but highly successful (in terms of world sales) Le notti del terrore. More of the beautifully decorated interiors are seen in Patrick Lives Again, than in the subsequent film.  The production values, though low, and lighting of the film seems to be not bad and the film has a more polished feel than most low budget productions made on a similar budget would have had.  A somewhat erratically composed score by Berto Pisano [who also worked under the pseudonym of Bert Rexon] accompanies the proceedings taking place on screen.  

Special effects are best described as hokum, having been created by the late Rosario Prestopino (who died recently aged only 57), but somehow work, and Crisanti speaks with fond affection for his craftsmanship during the interview, in particular the masks he created for the zombies during Burial Ground.  The most extreme special effects come during the killing off of Giordano’s character which are gruesome yet unconvincing, but remains still rather sadean and nasty, and most certainly messy.  Some effects are simply cheap and silly, such as the “haunting” appearance of Patrick’s eyes on a green background coming towards various characters are supposed to be menacing.  However it looks cheaply executed and laughable, giving the film an odd sense of being a throwback to the science fiction B-movies made in the States made during the 1950s.  The direction by Landi, at the time an accomplished TV director in Italy, and who had made his name directing adaptations of Maigret seems to be uninspired in his direction here, which is at best, very routine, with the occasional pornographic feel, with his camera seeming to leer on close-ups of two of his female stars private parts.  Additionally, there are moments of laziness, such as shots in the film are briefly out of focus, even in one simple dialogue scene between Davis and Meg which doesn’t require much tracking, the camera takes a couple of attempts to focus on the characters talking to each other.  In addition, the film sadly lacks any suspense or atmosphere, or even a likeable character for the viewer to identify with.

Picture quality is clear and crisp, with the film being presented in an anamorphic widescreen presentation and presumably having been remastered and struck from the original elements held in Rome.  The film here looks as good as it ever will do, having been shot on a minimal budget but the picture is clean, crisp and with no discernable damage since it’s limited release in 1980 to Italian cinemas.  Equally so the sound, presented solely in Italian (as stated before, no English dub was ever made) with clear Italian dialogue which are pretty much correct and follow what is being said on screen, even though there are a few minor errors in translation here and there.  Also with character names being spelt Sheril (instead of Sheryl) and Mr and Mrs “Cough” (presumably Gough).  However a good quality release, the best the film is ever likely to look, with the greens being bold, the frequent bouts of flesh on display looking natural and without any discernable scratches or graininess.  All in all a pleasing transfer has been made for this release.   

Extras consist of an interview with the titular Patrick, Gianni Dei, and with the producer Gabriele Crisanti, who had been previously interviewed on the Burial Ground release from Media Blasters. Dei is interviewed beneath a portrait of himself (painted by Tyrone Power’s widow, Linda Christian, in his home in Rome.  Dei, who says he has never seen the film, shares the few memories he has of the film, which was mostly lying in a hospital bed, also of his costars, and seems has kept in close contact and friendships with all his female costars, each of whom he speaks off in fond terms.  Dei also talks about his work in the fashion business [he owns a boutique in Rome’s illustrious via della Croce] and his singing career as well.  

The interview with Gabriele Crisanti is refreshingly honest and frank and the more revealing of the two, despite being quite an engaging character off camera, and producer of some of the trashiest movies to come out of the Italy at the end of the 70’s/early 80s and the scummy Caged Women and Mondo Cane 2000 at the start of the 1990s, looks generally as sour-faced as he did when he was interviewed previously for the Media Blasters release of Burial Ground (a copy of which Crisanti has sitting on his desk during the interview). Some of the facts relayed by Crisanti are wrong (such as his belief that the original film Patrick, to which this was promoted as a pseudo-sequel, as being Scandinavian (in fact it was Australian) and he seems to almost dismiss his own film as being just “commercial” and to make money.  Yet, despite these seeming misgivings about the film, some amusing stories are relayed about how Mario Landi’s smoking habits, and how Carmen Russo used the money she made from the film to pay for plastic surgery (though clearly she had already paid for significant breast augmentations prior to making the film).  During the course of the interview, he breaks into good humor when discussing how he came up with the nasty demise for Giordano, following to an nasty argument between him and his leading lady the day previously off screen.  He speaks almost gleefully about how he and the director had devised this particularly nasty demise to shock, almost to offend her.   Subsequent releases stateside on DVD of Crisanti’s movies, again starring Giordano, are available and can be found in Satan’s Baby Girl [1982] and Malabimba [1979], though so far the most notorious and nasty of his movies, Giallo a Venezia [1977] eludes release on DVD thus far. 

Attempts have been made at constructing two separate featurettes by Media Blasters, who previously had left their interviews crude and unedited, which divided the fans of these movies as to their opinion of the quality of the releases, some of who preferred the polished look without questions being asked but memories being linked by clips taken from the movie.  Here Media Blasters have removed the questions being asked and abruptly interpolate the interview with brief clips from the film followed by black screens showing the questions asked.  Though this is an improvement and has a more polished feel than previous releases as the previous releases had left gaps and the interviewer [myself] somewhat nervous and fumbled Italian intact, it still shows the relative indifference that media Blasters had towards it’s product or producing interesting or quality featurettes for a substantial quota of their initial and early DVD releases of European cult cinema oddities.  The questions are interesting and the editing is better, but still somehow, there is something lacking, together with the subtitles still always not synching up with what is being said on screen.

Initially an interview was planned with the engaging and still attractive star Mariangela Giordano, previously interviewed for the Media Blasters release of Le notti del terrore a.k.a. Zombie 3 [under the title of Burial Ground] however time constraints and Ms Giordano being ill with flu prevented the interview from taking place.  Time constraints also prevented Carmen Russo from being interviewed to discuss her opinions and memories of the film.

Rounding off the extras is a photo gallery consisting of the Italian cinema poster and the 6 lobby cards which would have been released with the film.  As the film has had minimal release on home video (only in Italy) and Germany the resources are slim.  Patrick was never dubbed into English nor French so materials are even more limited.  In addition there is the theatrical trailer. Also included is the original theatrical trailer, making much emphasis on Gianni’s Dei’s green eyes and highlighting some of the movie’s colorful death scenes.  Indeed the green eyes that figure prominently on the poster and the trailer, also are to be found on Media Blasters’ cover art, but strangely enough the eyes are not those of Gianni Dei , in fact, they look like they might not even be a man’s (!).  This trailer has been placed together with trailers for Eaten Alive (why??), a trailer created in-house for Fulci’s excellent giallo A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (again why?? And such a clearly directed “in-house” sloppily constructed trailer as well), and one for Elsa Fraulein SS (ridiculously spelt Elsa Freuline SS by whoever designed the (static) DVD menus).  Minor spelling mistakes and a lack of interest were common in Media Blasters at the time, with Cristanti’s Christian name being spelt as Gabrielle (!) and credits taken from the IMDb have been reproduced on the back.

Patrick Lives Again was released through Media Blasters in two different versions, the Rated Cut Version and the Uncut release [the version under review here].  The cut version has a considerable quota of the violence removed, the shocking death of Mariangela Giordano being the key scene that has been pruned from the release.  In addition some of the scenes of nudity have been trimmed, such as the close ups of on screen Belfiore’s vagina when briefly masturbating. These “cuts” makes the purchase of the softer version of he film, losing all the sex and violence a pointless purchase so much as to be redundant.  The choice of releasing this movie was an interesting decision for Media Blasters, through it’s Shriek Show sub-label, which covered a diverse genre of films, from thrillers and cannibal movies, to zombies and post nukers(uggh!) .  Also, Patrick Lives Again in it’s uncut format has been very difficult to find, an almost elusive release over the years. On videocassette, it was released heavily cut in Germany and trimmed significantly in Italy, only available uncut in a long out of print release in Switzerland.  In addition the film was never dubbed into English, no English track exists, which might put off most horror fans straight away, having to read subtitles to the (admittedly) awful, at times amusing but generally silly and stupid dialogue.  The special effects are not particularly good or inspiring, though at times rather nasty and shocking, possessing the same cheapness as found in Burial Ground and Giallo a Venezia. The violence here is more sexually overt (the film was made in late 1977) than those found in most other horror films of the time by contemporary directors such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci.

The storyline is paper-thin, acting is incredulous and dialogue pointless, veering between stupid, absurd and banal.  Yet somewhere in what could be dismissed as a complete mess of a film, lies the element of the watching as being a guilty pleasure.  Dialogue is bad and stilted makes for amusing listening at times, and it is difficult to believe that Piero Regnoli was a prolific screenwriter at the time of writing the treatment and screenplay. Dialogue is at its most risible with characters contradicting what they had said just two sentences previously. There is the wonderful “heated” argument where the two lead actresses throw insults at each other (most useful for expanding any learner’s of Italian’s vocabulary of swearwords and insults!) which leads to a catfight in which both brawling actresses attempt tear each others clothes off (!).  

In addition to the aforementioned catfight, there is further and frequent nudity throughout the film, showing Carmen Russo’s obviously augmented breasts (which never seem to move !!), plentiful nudity is also provided by both Giordano and pretty blonde Belfiore, both of whom reveal all the camera.  The male cast members are generally unattractive, Dei does little, Paolo Giusti’s expression doesn’t change and John Benedy resembles an unattractive mustachioed 70’s male porno actor so much to appearing briefly naked on screen.   Most extraordinary was the casting of Piteoff, clearly on his uppers, and is probably best known for his role in Last Year in Marienbad, who toplines the cast.  Rumor has it that he was working on films such as this one to fuel a drinking problem, and certainly his roles were becoming smaller and smaller over the years so much so that his role in Argento’s Inferno being little more than an almost glorified cameo.

When watched at the <>, Patrick is so brainless that it could be considered, both diverting as well as entertaining, and actually quite amusing, though not quite of the category “so bad it’s good”.  However as pointless, mindless, un-PC entertainment to waste away an hour and a half with some unintentional (?) humor, nubile flesh, and hokum horror, perhaps on a very wet Sunday afternoon when there is little else worth watching, yes, perhaps it is worth picking up Patrick and giving it a spin on the DVD player, just don’t expect the polish or stylishness of Argento or Bava,.  Expect more the entertainment value of hacks such as Luigi Batzella, Bruno Mattei, Alfonso Brescia or even Enzo Milioni (!).  Trash aficionados will enjoy this one for all the facets which make European Z grade cinema from the 60’s and 70’s so entertaining. The film, although far from good, has it’s qualities, from the hooey effects to the gratification derived from seeing the three female leads in a frequent sense of undress. Ed Wood film making and storytelling with abundant female flesh on display.  To sum up, Patrick Lives Again can be summed up as trash entertainment, and exploitation in the truest sense of the word.    

STORY/FILM : - 2 / 5 Bitch Slaps
PICTURE: - 4.5 / 5 Bitch Slaps
AUDIO: - 4 / 5 Bitch Slaps
EXTRAS: - 2.5 / 5 Bitch Slaps
OVERALL DVD: - 3 / 5 Bitch Slaps

2008 @ Cinema Nocturna